Those Who Teach and Can Do

Dancing the decades downtown, intimate flamenco in Echo Park and Orange, moving in the architecture in West Hollywood, family friendly festivities in Jefferson Park and Tarzana, and more SoCal dance this week.

5. Dance among the roses

Children from the Pony Box Dance Academy are one of the dance groups performing as part of International Children’s Dance Day. Not just dance, as the park hosts music groups, a ferris wheel, arts, crafts, and an egg hunt. Exposition Park, Rose Garden, 700 Exposition Park Dr, Jefferson Park; Sat., Apr. 20, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., free.

Pony Box Dance Academy students. Photo courtesy of PBDA.

4. Last dancer standing

The interplay of the architecture contained in R.M. Schindler’s famous concrete “Slab-Tilt” Schindler House in West Hollywood and artist Alison Knowles’ 1960’s intermedia piece The Play House is grist for Shelter or Playground-The House of Dust at the Schindler House, a series of performative investigations. Last month the four month exhibit launched with a day of performances from an international roster of choreographers including locally-based Milka Djordjevich. Djordjevich’s work is the only dancemaker getting a repeat showing, twice a month until June. Details on the architecture and avant garde movement that inspired this event and the extended endeavor that incorporates Djordjevich’s performances at https://makcenter.org. Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Rd., West Hollywood; Sat., Apr. 20, May 4 & 18, June 1, 3 p.m., free. https://makcenter.org.

The 1980’s in New York’s East Village saw the growth of gender performance art, decimation by the AIDS epidemic, and the rise of label-defying John Kelly as a leader and survivor. Trained as a dancer, then as a visual artist, Kelly is unconstrained by labels in Time No Line as he offers text from his four decades of journals along with songs from Joni Mitchell, Henry Purcell and Charles Aznavour, video and live drawing. The New York Times described Kelly as packing “a lot in about 75 minutes, yet he also knows when to let things breathe…Time, then, is not just nonlinear but magically suspended.” REDCAT at Disney Hall, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown; Thurs.-Sat., Apr. 25-27, 8:30 p.m., $18-20, $14-$16. https://www.redcat.org.

John Kelly. Photo by Theo Cote.

1. Studio to stage

One of SoCal’s most respected dance departments, Cal State University Long Beach attracts an impressive faculty roster covering a spectrum of styles from classic to cutting edge. Not only are the faculty admired teachers, they are also accomplished choreographers whose work is displayed on their students in the annual CSULB Dance in Concert. This year, concert director Keith Johnson presides over performances that include Summer Brown’s quicksilver movement in This, Colleen Dunagan’s In Common offering an alternative to the commodification of dance, and Julio Medina’s Respirando Agua considering the space between breaths. Johnson contributes a new work The Unbearable Weight of Falling Ashes and guest artist Teresa Jankovic sets a dozen women in motion in Eyes Closed and Traveling. Info at http://www.csulb.edu/dance. CSULB Martha B. Knoebel Dance Theater, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach; Wed.-Fri., Apr. 24-26, 8 p.m. Sat., Apr. 27, 2 & 8 p.m., $20, $16 students, seniors & Dance Resource Center members. 562-985-7000. https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/997077.

About the author

Ann Haskins has written about dance for L.A. Weekly since shortly after it began publishing. She also has written about local and national dance for Pointe Magazine, Dance Spirit Magazine, Dance Teacher Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, L.A. View, Coast Magazine, the Daily News, and the Herald Examiner. Among her broadcast projects, Ann hosted Inside Theater on KCRW-FM and contributed dance and theater features to both KLON-FM and KUSC-FM. She has received two Horton Awards from the Los Angeles Dance Resource Center for her coverage of dance in Los Angeles.

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Cultural Weekly is a place to talk about our creative culture with passion, perspective and analysis – and more words than “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Our mission is to draw attention to our cultural environment, illuminate it, and make it ... read more